~ Sedayne Astray Volume 6: Green as God the Touched Brow of the Winter ~

ploughmyth 9192





Disk One / 76.59

i) Astray: Plough Myth / 6.18
(voice / plucked & bowed crwth / koboz / bird flute)

listen / close / and it shall be / told / told in the telling / told in the telling between the setting of the sun and the rising of the moon / listen / listen: for is that not the hare that passes by this place? / knowing the first spun spinning wheel of this telling / hopper of ditches / cropper of corn / a wee brown cow with a pair of leather horns / milk the darkness with your shuddering run / beast of no claiming / beast of no claiming / hare came once / the hunger is the last rage upon this plough / it takes three foldings of becoming to break it free at last from the snaring under growth / firstly the hand is lifted against the sky to touch those stars / seven stars for a mask of truth / for in this there comes no beckoning echo / only the warmth therefrom / outlining what remains wanting with the neutral cement of a more cautious restoration / secondly the snaring waves that rise about me speak only of the bright moon in whose arms I am wrapped / both of unfolding joy and resplendent shadow / here the spider was waiting / there beside the rusted hinge where the screws pull out of rotten wood / as hands begin to tug the gate / that it crumbles away at the human touch should be no cause for any alarm / see there the spider goes among rusted pans and stoory pots / thirdly I cut the tethering rope from the goats neck / and send it scampering to the city / there it will form from the dust of ages the testimony of compromise / wherein the lout and the scholar know no other history / and in that dilution there will come forth the cloud of deceit / where history waits / sure the foot that holds it / dark the mouth that mocks it / yet in that heart there is fear / for the moral maze that you impose cannot hold our power / out of necessity our lives are born / concern is brightest where the sword is sharpest / and waiting is what we're best at / for in changing we are changeless / for in changing / we are changeless / don't loose the falcon til you see the hare / don't loose the falcon til you see the hare / in this there awaits only the shadow / and lurking in that shadow will be cause enough for celebration / to yourself then / my dark companion / might I at last call my love over our wall? / or will the gathering night only allow one of us to remain here? / you go / I will remain until at last you are gone from my sight / until Harky rides the owld grey / until at last you return / aye listen / is that not the stag that passes by this place? / I have seen it / stir not / for in stirring we shatter the silence / so listen / close / and it shall be told


ii) Bird # 1 / 4.59
(voice / rabab / harmonic pipes / bird flutes / bells)

Bird came once / it was Harris building fires that brought it / in winter he burned the nest / and out flew Bird / egg hatched in fire / and Bird was born / Bird went in the trees and looked at the moon / Bird flew among stars until resting it came / to the roof of the crone Kema / Kema / Kema took stones and threw them at Bird / but Bird was quick / and these stones were Kema's wall / Kema's wall / in came the bear from the wood / into Kema's room / Bear lay there / Kema could not move it / but Bird flew in and rested on Bear / both before Kema's fire they were / until Kema brought bread out of her oven to give to Bird / but Bird would not eat the bread / why not eat this? asked Kema / and Bird said that Bear would be worse hungry than Bird would be / so Kema went to Bear with bread / and Bear ate Bread but wished for honey / Kema brought honey / and Bear ate honey but wished for salmon / Kema brought salmon / and Bear ate salmon but wished for ale / Kema brought ale / and Bear drank ale and wished for summer / slept ale-merry in Kema's room / Bird flew by house once more / and found much there to delight in / out of the goat's anus she fed on worms / out of the goat's coat she found lice / Bird came once / it was Harris building fires that brought it


iii) Wodwo / 2.39
(crwth / gardon / koboz / bells)

(The main part of this melody came about whilst recording the Metgumbnerbone single for Necrophile Records some years earlier; the single remained unreleased, but will feature as Widdershins on the forthcoming Metgumbnerbone retrospective...)


iv) October / 6.23
(voice / crwth / koboz / bird flutes)

dark to dark / this weaving / in fabric at last resplendent this while / wherein autumn waits at the door of winter / wrought now in October's glad shine / see there / the summer goes out from fields at the turning of the plough / and out from this pasture at the drop of an alder leaf / cry out then / soul pattern of plough myth / plough myth / in this bright wind / that hurls light of the western sky / at the half-seeing eye / in this web is woven the legend of that winter / where knowing as unknowing / resplendent the sacred shadow waits / there / catch / star-bright / its first frosts bejewel the morning ground as out that way I go / as out that way I go / what fire blaze is there? / the plough rends once more the barren fertile / in this welcome tearing that darkens the land / stained and blood soaked before this autumn / I hold forth a hand between earth and sky / and there await this day / and there await this day / what fire blaze is there? / the plough rends once more the barren fertile / in the welcome tearing that darkens the land / stained and blood soaked before this autumn / I hold forth / a hand / between earth and sky / and there await this day / and there await this day / and there await this day


v) Storytelling # 1 / 3.11
(bird flutes / talgardon / rabab / bells)


vi) Harvest Home: Harvest Myth / 4.07
(voice / crwth / gardon / koboz / bird)

rising to the wind now / to weave again the bright line that tears breath from blood / and soaks again in the darknesses that enfold me here / one soul enwrapped and empowered / thus moves the heaven we might know further / and this day was broken on the rack of time / coming at last into its own / only by the tearing of the plough / that comes against no option but that of the dream we wove in that place / the head bowed to the wind / determined to strike the line into the future / but finding the ground broken with boulders / resolution failed with the failing of that day / I saw them / they came with fiddles to the harvest home / but dark the dance they wove in this heart / as the night gathered in this other music that shone between the brightness of the notes they played / the dance wove resplendent then / and the firelight failed to warm the shadowed cold in this heart / beat first the barley on the threshing floor / and barn it then for the winter time / they'll sing hymns to you / they'll weave cornstalks for you / they'll dry the failing summer with the music of lost labour / transfigured into ritual / wherein no walls could contain the aching that burns the rising now / and this they'll cast off / at last beneath the plough of seven stars that will mask their becoming / seeing there the peace that rests in us / I turn / and take a bearing from an inconstant star


vii) Hearthcharm: September Myth Revisited # 1 (3rd November 1992) / 8.11
(round crwth / koboz / gardon / bird / low whistle)


viii) Bird Autumn / 5.01
(voice / rabab / harmonic pipes / talgardon / rattles / dry leaves / bells / birds)

aye Bird gazed out / fruit garlands about him / rowan and slow he knew then / wind shifted among leaf and star / becoming in rare being / as autumn stirred then / aye stirring thus patterns unfolded beneath the plough / and yoked the year to the determination of self and other / and there came a breath / caught in the air of morning / where embers fail / cool in the warming day / wind given / hanging threads of smoke from tree to crowned tree / the rowan and the elder / dark and yet darker / with the rising of that day then / in the falling or the rising of the year / aye Bird gazed and saw the first and the last star of the morning / Bird saw among woodsmoke the shadows of the harvest stacked there / dry before the low sun / it struck red the fox-red of the sere bracken / and berries there were sure / and about them wasps would go / about them birds would go / before ever the villagers came and gathered them / and yet from there Bird moved into the villages about that place / aye one was there / with harp singing / songlines twisted in the vision he transfigured into myth brightness / and this was his song that morning / sung to those that gathered there / each one a line to pattern of the folded year / aye stone this cup / in the rested passage / in the bright blade there is still / for the moon goes among constellations of the harvest / the golden grain fallen on the threshing floor / and we trace there patterns one to the other / and there await this day / that this day came startled me again / and standing I gazed into the cup she held there / aye Bird heard then the miller's song / sung to the music of twisting wooden pegs / turning wheel / turning quern / where the golden grain was crushed and fallen into sackings then / and the river gave up motion before the weir / became a stillness reflecting the tumult of the mill / and there Bird gazed / once and again / Bird then heard the blacksmith / blessing and cursing the cross he was forging / red and white iron became black in the same brackish water / containing then and transfiguring all / lit by the rising sun / the cross he held before that bright door / a hammer rested by the anvil / and at last all was silent / for here the day was made new in the dreaming eye of Bird / which fastens at gates and ditches / and the cold moon over valleys /open to this / closed to that / and yet beyond the houses the fell shouted in purples of heather / Bird itself in that time / aye flew to Kema's door / and gave song to Kema in notes flung into silent sleep she rested in / Kema woke in aching in aching cold / cursing Bird with a silent blessing / aye Kema woke in aching cold / cursing Bird with a silent blessing


ix) Autumn Prelude & Onset Part One / 13.38
(gardon / cymbals / bird flutes / whistle flutes / angklung / koboz / voice / kalimba / mbira / tabla / horn / crwth)

foldings of time / like earth and blood / as any hare that comes / leaping itself out from shadows / courses this aching land / revealing the bones / slow skin sinks in dry sockets / where eyes retreat into no heaven / but that of the earth we have made new / and myth transfigured now / beyond any notion of death or unity / aye death pains agony / nothing waits by this gate / undergrowth once snaring lets go / at last / leaves dry in this wind / cracks to air / filling and urging autumn / leaves dry in this wind / cracks to air / filling and urging / autumn


x) Gabber Reel & Storytelling # 2 / 8.54
(round crwth / koboz / gardon / bells / birds // syrinx / bird flutes / talgardon / harmonic pipes / camel bells)


xi) Old Crwth & Gabber Reel / 3.13
(voice / round crwth / koboz / bells / birds)

of a crwth ye shall hear / that came in that bright autumn / long years and years ago / before ever any fires were lit before the plough / as harvest gathered shadows / and birds flocked to the call / aye cut from whatever tree ye will this crwth sang in the hands of Sedayne / who was leaping out of time / the time left to him / catching at the bright notes that rested in the woven corn / eyes open to the river song / where trout was leaping / and Bird caught that eye and bowed a silver wing to a fresher wind / feathered the bow and twisted strings like twisted time / and the old crwth sang / and cities the length and breadth of England ached to its wounded note / got then as ice in the old Derwent days brought him down / crwth and all / to the frozen earth / and crwth cracked to a tear and gained another voice / aye fiddlers wove the myth afresh / and aye hearing ye my heart's made new / you're still my own bonny sweet / who rode so many the mile over hedges ditches brooks and bridges and gates and many the stile / of a crwth ye shall hear / that came in that bright autumn / long years and years ago / before ever any fires were lit before the plough / as harvest / gathered shadows / and birds flocked to the call


xii) Storytelling # 3 / 4.00
(rabab / talgardon / harmonic pipes / bells / birds)


xiii) Bird & Trout / 2.56
(voice / rabab / harmonic pipe / bells / foxes)

Bird caught Trout / out of river / and Bird took Trout to the grass / and lay Trout there / watching as Trout gasped / and died in the cold air of that dusk / I saw you there, Trout / in river swimming / I mistook you for the reflected moon / to fish the moon out from river / with what strength I had then / aye failing me now to lift you back / Trout became Hare / leaping high into the air / Bird saw Hare and moon reflected then in that water / gazing / by shadows in that time / by alder tree in the night that came then / elsewhere by fires gathered the people who told this story / and Bird listened / one eye on the moon and the hare therein / and one eye on the silences between their words / Bird came once / it was Harris / lighting fires / that brought it


xiv) Ceres / 2.53
(koboz / crwth / whistle flutes)


Disk Two / 76.26

i) Winter's Dance: Wake the Plough # 1 / 4.06
(voice / winter fiddles / koboz / bells)

to dance by coldness and snows / over ice on rivers / to climb black trees by fires and watch the cold moon over valleys / and the cold sun over moors / aye in winter's dance / in winter's dance come by the bright way / and see there where summer has left no trace / but the aching in a dark heart furrow that only now begins to yield to the promise of another harvest yet / time to weave where embers glow / time to gaze bright eyed into eyes / like stars / and wander these lands afresh / to the glow of becoming that rises now / voiceless / and seeing ye yet welcome / winter and ye yet there / might we turn our gaze only forwards / beyond the stubble fields that yet still wait the plough / they fail to catch the chance the yield / wrought / turn only to the rising year that drags to death the shadow we endure / in the promise of this bright winter / in the promise of this bright winter


ii) Nbeh & Cassiopeia Prelude / 7.16
(rabab / harmonic pipes / koboz / gardon / )


iii) Bird: Rumpot / 3.02
(voice / horse hair fiddle / talgardon / wooden jaw harp / bird flutes)

aye Bird gazed into eye of Harris / saw his own eye reflected amongst tears of joy / cold and wind / Harris gazed into eye of Bird and saw his own eye reflected / no tear in eye of Bird / aye no tear in eye of Bird / blink of glint / and glint of the star / and there in gazing came woven dream / woven dream of winter / Myier became fox and Mjier became hare / about frozen lands bright in glad shine went they / voiceless / voiceless / asking not nor knowing / Bird saw them dreaming / among stars they were going / among trees they were running / aye clear cold that sky that cracks at the eye / and what boils in the lum pot is a broth for the rumpot / as sitting there ye are marked out by moon and star / aye horses paced wind in moonlight that night / and Bird gave song to winter / and held wing against moon / and resting fell by embers / aye Bird / Fox / and Hare / brought flame again round logs of ash / and Bird caught that in the dreaming eye of Harris / awaiting there another day / yet given / saw there bright as frosts the glory of its becoming


iv) Hearthcharm: September Myth Revisited # 2 (6th December 1992) / 8.04
(round crwth / koboz / gardon / bird / low whistle)


v) Winter Hare Dance / 10.27
(voice / foxes / bird flutes / koboz / gardon / crwth)

the man that should the hare meet / will never come to have him beat / unless he lay upon the ground / that which he carries in his hand / be it staff or be it bow and bless him with his elbow / and with right good devotion he shall speak this orizon / in honour of the hare / then will he better fare...

a hopper of ditches / a cropper of corn / a wee brown cow / with a pair of leather horns

the hare / the scutter / the big / the bouchart / the scuffler / the robber / the rascal / the racer / the way-beater / the hairless / the go-by-ditch / the grimer / the wimont / the bulger / the steal away / the mumbler / the ill-to-meet / the scutt / the dew creature / the grass biter / the late at home / the treacherous / the friendless one / the wood-cat / the broad gazer / the broom cat / the purblind / the furze cat / the croucher / the west gazer / the wall eyed / the side gazer / likewise the hedge chaser / the stub-deer / the long ear / the straw beast / the lecher / the wild beast / the leaper / the short beast / the lurker / the wind swift / the skulker / the hare shagger / the hedge cowerer / the dew duck / the dew hopper / the sitter / the grass hopper / the fittle foot / the fold sitter / the light foot / the fern sitter / the cabbage deer / the weed cropper / the go by ground / the sit still / the peg tail / the turn to hill / the swift away / to make afraid / the white of womb / the go with lambs / the chump / the jowler / the miser / the peasant / the make unrest / the break word / the snub nose / the shaven / his chief name is villain

when the hare dies the fox mourns: when the hare rises the falcon swoops / hold with the hare and run with the hounds

oh the stag with the leathery horns / the animal that lives in the corn / the animal that all men scorn / but the animal that no one dare name / oh the animal that no one dare name

oh the blood more stirs: to rouse a lion than to start a hare / hold with the hare and run with the hounds / watch the tree and await the hare / aye watch the tree and await the hare / don't loose the falcon til you see the hare / a hare is a hare / when the hare dies the fox mourns: when the hare rises the falcon swoops

aye the stag with the leathery horns / the animal that lives in the corn / the animal that all men scorn / but the animal that no one dare name / aye the animal that no one dare name

a wee brown cow

and when all this you have spoken / then the hare's might is broken / then you can journey forth / east and west / and south and north / whatever way a man will / a man that has any skill / and now good day to you Sir Hare / so well may God let you fair / that you come to me alive / above black furrows / beneath winter skies

(Note: the bulk of this is a Middle English poem consisting of pejorative names to fling at a hare and thereby gain power over it; much of the translation was done for me by Thor Ewing, but several lines remain from the translation at it appears in The Leaping Hare by David Thomson and George Ewart Evans (Faber 1972) which also supplied the various proverbs that make up the rest of the text. The chant (hopper of ditches etc.) is a riddle about the hare from Country Antrim that echoes the sentiments of the Middle English poem. The last line as it appears in the original poem reads: that you come unto me dead, either in onion broth, or just in bread; the alteration is, of course, my own. This performance dedicated to Raymond Greenoaken, Alan English & Ragnerbone.)


vi) Bell Note of Blessed Prayer / 2.45
(voice / winter fiddle / koboz / whistle flute / gardon / bells)

passages course and the year tilts again / twice revolving from summer to summer / and the time between / twisting I see it / a three-fold plait of being, becoming and necessity / measure now and echo some bright myth as we perceive constellations / and are these patterns the measure of joy? / are they the patterns / the bell note of blessed prayer? / hymn and thanks awoken / and somewhere morning waits / measure again these conceptual lines / and rest there only between assumed points of origin and destination / and see there the summer turns / at this / the last place of our knowing / the last place of our knowing / and the last blessing of our becoming / the last blessing of our becoming / satisfaction of seeking / one light from our lady of autumn / comes at last / dancing / Deo Gratias / Deo Gratias


vii) Harvest Myth # 2 & Crannog Prelude / 6.22
(gardon / bird flutes / koboz / crwth / crotales)


viii) Harky's Song for Winter / 3.20
(voice / foxes / talgardon / rabab / bells / wood jaw harp / bird)

from this white frost / melting before my touch / cold warmth to the black thorn / to pierce this skin / frost gives before blood warmth / there to catch the sun / sun I see you rising & shattering shadowed cold that grips me now / from that may thorn tree / red haws still cluster / aye white now at the gate of the year / blood red that sun like your own red / and bone white that numbs my skin / send that cold light shining bright to this failing eye / blurred by tears in the flailing wind / aye winter catch then at the cold root and branch / and send out this light choked to the gate of the year / aye winter at this day I have bent my own back to the weight of this load / it has slipped my ain foot against rocks half seen along the way / and there came no sound but an echo of that cry / aye winter I saw you; you made some smile / some light in this dark / some warmth in this cold / and there came three more from out of the west / and the plough turns above furrows holding the step beneath their feet / aye winter I saw you as shouting you went ower the fell to nae rest other than yer ain death / peel back these months / to the bones of that year / fleshless and raw in winter's bright failing


ix) Langspillans Harvest Myth / 6.25 (hummel / rebec / whistle flute)


x) Gate Revisted: Plough Myth / 3.07
(voice / koboz / harmonic pipe / koboz / plucked crwth / bells / bird)

gate revisited: still knots / held by undergrowth / ensnared / untouched / light weaves cloud and wind / until rains soak / green as God the touched brow of the winter / green as God the touched brow of the winter / aye spring came then / leaping out of these darknesses like a startled hare / I admit now it caught my own foot mid falter / for eyes couldn't pierce the gathering of the year / for some seemed too beautiful to touch whilst others stung me and brought me down / and here breath breaks from a gasping mouth / and all I hear is the sea that breaks long miles from here / and the time that lies between all too readily lengthens / but there comes no eleventh hour / for that gate closed in a dream / and the wood that was rotted now holds fast / in the earth of a heartland / enduring this other winter / confident of another spring / enduring this other winter / confident of another spring


xi) Winter Plough Song: Wake the Plough # 2 & Wren Charm / 8.17
(voice / winter fiddles / bells / koboz / bird / harmonic pipe)

turn bright year & falling winds will thresh our breath this while / and turning yet see failed the promise we each spoke from dark mouths / where aching craves crave only for futures spun from death's bright grace / God speed ye now no agony thrives on the heart's darkness once healed / for the twisted year waits hollow in ditches that ensnare the furrowed field / aye bless the time when spent passions fade before the glory of the rising day / God speed ye now no agony thrives on the heart's darkness once healed


xii) Bird # 2 / 5.03
(voice / crwth / koboz / gardon)

Bird came once / it was Harris lighting fires that brought it / in winter he burned nest / for egg had hatched in fire & bird was born / Bird flew among trees & he looked at moon / Bird flew among stars til resting it came / to the roof of the crone, Kema / Kerma / Kema took stones and threw them at Bird / but Bird being quick these stones missed Bird / falling instead at the back of the house / where these stones broke the ice in Kema's well / these stones were however Kema's wall / here wall had once been through there came Bear / Bear went in house to rest before fire / in came Bird to rest upon Bear / Kema brought bread and gave bread to Bird but Bird would not eat the bread that she gave / why not eat this? Kema asked Bird / Bird said Bear would be worse hungry than Bird would be / so Kema took bread and gave it Bear / and Bear ate bread but now wished for honey / Kema brought honey and gave it to Bear / and Bear ate honey and wished for Salmon / Kema brought Salmon and gave it to Bear / and Bear ate Salmon and now wished for ale / Kema brought ale and gave it to Bear / Bear drank ale and now wished for summer / summer / Bear slept ale-happy by Kema's bright fire / and Kema took seeds and gave them to Bird / Bird ate seeds and flew out the door / Bird flew among clouds until resting it came / on coat of the goat by Kema's well / Kema's well / out of the goat's coat Bird feasted on lice but tastier still Bird won worms out of its arse / both Bird and Goat were glad about this / but worms were not glad to be eaten by Bird / who will mourn the fate of those infesting worms? / the only tears for them were shed by Bird / Bird came once / it was Harris lighting fires that brought it


xiii) Storytelling # 4 / 3.16
(rababgardon / dvoynice / bells / bird )


xiv) Astray: Fallen as Bright Eyed as Becoming / 4.20
(voice / plucked & bowed crwth)

bound to no path / all gates are open gates / and winter only fastens where decay breaks / severs snarings / rotted / enclosing this dark seclusion / it fails as leaves fall / opening skies to the earth again / and nothing fastens / and lifeless breath drifts voiceless in the cold of night / as night falls in sunless winter / then we reach out / to clamour by fires / dry logs by red warmth / to reach at last our souls where aching has broken on the rack of that other memory / as fallen as bright eyed as becoming / it casts a shadow from this cradled eye / across the furrow torn where Orion turns / and the Plough spills out against its unknown dream / and the Plough spills out against its unknown dream / cognition twist to this tideless turning / and winter breathes a breathless sighing / against the breath of this deathless being / aye they go sure half-footed between the first step and the last step / it carries proud the conceptual excellence a long way yet / as eyes mirror eyes and stars mirror stars / and voices crack in breathing whispers / ripe against the golden grain / aye winter I saw you: this day that has risen fails fallen and no moon shines / where horses run: hooves thrash at the frozen pasture once through tears the moon shone where they ran / and to beg for belonging / as close as closed hearts contain the web broken from star to star / and rising from falling / to brush back the breath of this gleaming earth / that transfigures this winter by a promise of spring / axes lie rusted as containment fails to oil the edge of their breath / stone yields passive to the foldings of tides / and such grindings that measure again the extent of that yielding / it adds as sliced as this finger yields blood between the blade and the frozen earth / and if warmth there once was / it now goes / and if warmth there once was / it now / goes